Penrics labors, p.1
Penric's Labors, page 1
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
MASQUERADE IN LODI
THE ORPHANS OF RASPAY
THE PHYSICIANS OF VILNOC
OUTRODUCTION
AUTHOR’s NOTE: A Bujold READING–Order GUIDE
Penric’s Labors
Lois McMaster Bujold
THREE PENRIC AND DESDEMONA NOVELLAS IN THE WORLD OF THE FIVE GODS BY GRANDMASTER LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD
Penric and Desdemona are back in three novellas from Grand Master Lois McMaster Bujold.
“Masquerade in Lodi”
Bastard’s Eve is a night of celebration for most residents in the canal city of Lodi—but not for sorcerer Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona, who find themselves caught up in the affairs of a shiplost madman, a dangerous ascendant demon, and a very unexpected saint of the fifth god.
“The Orphans of Raspay”
When the ship in which they are traveling is captured by Carpagamon island raiders, Temple sorcerer Penric and his resident demon Desdemona find their life complicated by two young orphans, Lencia and Seuka Corva, who are far from home and searching for their missing father. Pen and Des will need all their combined talents of mind and magic to unravel the mysteries of the sisters and escape from the pirate stronghold.
“The Physicians of Vilnoc”
When a mysterious plague breaks out in the army fort guarding Vilnoc, the port capital of the duchy of Orbas, Temple sorcerer Penric and his demon Desdemona are called upon by General Arisaydia to resurrect Penric’s medical skills and solve its lethal riddle. In the grueling days that follow, Pen will find that even his magic is not enough to meet the challenges without help from dedicated new colleagues—and the god of mischance.
Includes a new introduction, “outroduction,” and suggested reading order by Lois McMaster Bujold.
BOOKS by LOIS McMASTER BUJOLD
The Vorkosigan Saga
Shards of Honor • Barrayar
The Warrior’s Apprentice • The Vor Game
Cetaganda • Borders of Infinity
Brothers in Arms • Mirror Dance
Memory • Komarr
A Civil Campaign • Diplomatic Immunity
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance • Cryoburn
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
Falling Free • Ethan of Athos
Omnibus Editions
Miles, Mystery & Mayhem • Miles, Mutants & Microbes
World of the Five Gods
The Curse of Chalion • Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
Penric’s Progress • Penric’s Travels • Penric’s Labors
The Sharing Knife Tetralogy
Volume 1: Beguilement • Volume 2: Legacy
Volume 3: Passage • Volume 4: Horizon
The Spirit Ring
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BAEN BOOKS
The Vorkosigan Companion, edited by Lillian Stewart Carl and John Helfers
Penric’s Labors
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Introduction copyright © 2022 by Lois McMaster Bujold, “Masquerade in Lodi” copyright © 2020 by Lois McMaster Bujold, “The Orphans of Raspay” copyright © 2019 by Lois McMaster Bujold, “The Physicians of Vilnoc” copyright © 2020 by Lois McMaster Bujold, Outroduction and “Author’s Note: A Bujold Reading-Order Guide” copyright © 2022.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9224-2
Cover art by Dominic Harman
Map by Ron Miller
First printing, November 2022
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bujold, Lois McMaster, author. | Bujold, Lois McMaster. Masquerade in Lodi. | Bujold, Lois McMaster. Orphans of Raspay. | Bujold, Lois McMaster. Physicians of Vilnoc.
Title: Penric's labors / by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Other titles: Masquerade in Lodi.
Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen Books, [2022] | Series: World of the five gods
Identifiers: LCCN 2022030079 | ISBN 9781982192242 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novellas.
Classification: LCC PS3552.U397 P45 2022 | DDC 813/.54--dc23/eng/20220624
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022030079
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Electronic Version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the third collection of Penric & Desdemona tales from the World of the Five Gods. To answer the question new readers will have first: Can these novellas be read before reading the earlier stories? Short answer: Yes.
Which is all one really needs to know. Feel free to turn to the first story now. Like other fantasy or science fiction works, the stories themselves will teach you about their world as you read them.
Longer explanation: I originally conceived these novellas as a linked group of tales each of which would work as a stand-alone, but also be part of a larger developing and interconnected series, much as I found stories about favorite characters at random in the science fiction magazines I read in my youth. Paper magazines used to have very limited space for novellas, which do hog a rather high page count per issue. This left few venues, with restricted editorial needs, for the form. When publishing moved online, especially with indie ebooks, this constraint ended—not only for length, but also content. Earlier in my career, there would not have been many places to sell this length of quirky fantasy tale; now, the virtual shelf space is boundless, resulting in a rich flowering of what was once a sparsely populated category of fiction.
I happily seized these e-advantages for the Penric tales, but corralling them on paper later meant the original floating ala carte scheme needed to be fixed in place. Which presents a special problem in an ongoing live series.
I have always felt free to jump around in my characters’ timelines as the story ideas take me, inadvertently leading to many online debates about reading orders. For the first two Penric collections from Baen Books, Penric’s Progress and Penric’s Travels, setting the then-extant novellas in internal-chronological order (my usual preference) posed no problems. But I foresaw that if the series went on long enough, further collections wouldn’t be able to stick to that. So I’m putting these newer stories in timeline-order within each paper volume, but letting the readers sort out the larger chronology for themselves.
Though not by themselves. We include a Bujold reading-order guide for all my work at the back of this volume. This includes a list of all the Penric & Desdemona tales at the time of this printing. For old readers returning (Welcome back! Five gods guard you on your path!) the reading-order guide should help to slot the new stories into the template already in your heads. New readers may use it as a way to find other stories later.
It’s very typical for old readers to earnestly claim my works have to be read in some particular order, and for new readers, stumbling across one in isolation for the first time, to say it worked just fine as a satisfactory read all by itself. I’m inclined to trust the new readers on this point, though I do admit later stories will contain inherent spoilers for earlier ones. But, really, so does their very existence. There is a broad and fuzzy boundary between too many spoilers, and keeping a story’s contents so secret no one can decide whether they want to read it or not. Spoiler sensitivity varies so much, this seems another issue best left for individual readers to decide for themselves.
So I’m going to place my remarks on the generation of these tales at the end of this volume, not only to put the hazard of spoilers out of the path, but because discussion of the stories’ contents will make much more sense after one has read them. This Outroduction will be found after the end of the third story, and before the reading-order guide.
Happy reading!
—Lois McMaster Bujold
August 2021
MASQUERADE
IN LODI
MASQUERADE IN LODI
The curia clerk wiped the sweat drop from the tip of his nose before it could fall and blot his page. “What could be worse,” he moaned, “than copying out letters in the Lodi midsummer?”
“Cutting up corpses in a Martensbridge midwinter,” Penric replied unthinkingly, then pressed his lips closed.
The diligent if overheated clerk paused to stare. “What? You did that? . . . Was it for your magics?” He leaned slightly away, as if suspecting Penric and his resident demon of arcane midnight grave-robbery.
“Anatomy classes for the apprentices at the Mother’s hospice,” Pen clarified quickly. “Our material was donated by the pious, mainly.” Plus the occasional unidentified, unclaimed body passed on by the city guard. The ones fished up from the thawing lake each spring had been the worst, if instructive.
“Oh. I did not know you’d been a medical student, too, Learned Penric.”
I was teaching. Pen waved the comment away. This wasn’t a topic he wished to pursue. Or a calling, but that conversation had been firmly concluded back in Marten sbridge. The bulwark of a large mountain range now stood between him and his former failings, and he was grateful for it. The dead had not distressed him; the dying had. “It proved one task too many for my hands, and I gave it up.”
A silent growl from Desdemona reminded him that self-castigation on this matter had also been firmly forbidden to him, under pain of demonic chiding. Since the bodiless demon that gave him the powers of a Temple sorcerer had been the successive possession of ten different women over two centuries before she’d fallen to Penric, she had chiding down to an art form.
Now, now.
Also nagging, he added.
Behave, or I’ll blot your page as well.
Which, as a bored creature of chaos, she was well qualified to effect, in so many ways. His lip twitched, and, oddly cheered, he turned back to the last lines of his translation.
The clerk had a point. Six months ago back in Martensbridge, Pen would have had to burn expensive wood to warm his chambers this much, but the humid reek drifting in through the windows overlooking the canal made Lodi heat more oppressive, when no sea breeze relieved it. His own quill scratched as he converted the last lines of the letter from its original Wealdean into Adriac for the archdivine’s eyes, and files, and handed it across to the clerk for copying.
This finished the morning’s stack. Which contained nothing, it had proved, too sensitive or urgent. Done for the day, he trusted.
Busy work, sniffed Des. Make-work. A waste of our talents.
Speak for yourself. I find it soothing. Although he looked forward to an afternoon to devote to his own personal projects, including free run of the Temple library, far from fully explored in the four months of his residence in the curial palace. Penric cleaned his quill and stretched.
Tomorrow is the famous Lodi Bastard’s Day festival, Des grumbled, and you want to spend it shut up indoors? The preparations and parties are in full swing!
So, people will all go out and leave me alone, Pen envisioned in hope. Although tomorrow night, he had social duties in the archdivine’s entourage; the ceremonies dedicated to the fifth god were supposed to include a feast and a comic masque, and singing by the Temple-sworn castrati choir that was said to be ethereal. He anticipated that more warmly.
He sorted out those letters and their translations that actually required his superior’s personal eyes, and with a cordial nod rose to leave the disposition of the rest to the very senior clerk, who wouldn’t have wanted a demon of disorder anywhere near his files anyway. Pen wound his way through halls decorated with fine pious paintings and tapestries—or mostly pious; the previous generations of prelates had possessed a variety of tastes—and down a marble staircase to Archdivine Ogial’s private cabinet.
The doorway was open to catch the nonexistent draft. Pen took it as invitation to rap on the jamb and put his head in. Gray-haired Ogial had surrendered his five-colored robes to the heat and hung them on a wall peg, and sat at his writing table in shirtsleeves. A lay dedicat in a grubby green tabard of the Mother’s Order hovered anxiously at his elbow. The lad looked up and gulped as Ogial waved Penric inside.
“The Wealdean letters, Your Grace,” Penric murmured, and laid them on the table.
“Ah. Thank you.” The archdivine gave them a brief survey, then leaned back and looked at Pen with narrowing eyes. “What were your plans for the day, Learned Penric?”
Note past tense, Pen thought glumly, but mustered, “Any duties you assign, a bit more translation on Learned Ruchia’s book, and then the library.”
“Hah, I suspected as much.” Ogial smiled with a paternal air, legacy of his early training in the Father’s Order before he’d risen through the hierarchy to broader duties. “This is your first Bastard’s Eve in Lodi, and you are a divine of His Order. You shouldn’t miss it. Take the rest of the day off, get out of this musty curia, and see how our city honors your chosen god. But first . . .”
Saw that coming, murmured Des.
“Dedicat Tebi here brings me a request from the chief physician of the Gift of the Sea—the charity hospice for the sailors near the northwest harbor, you know—to send over a Temple sensitive to look at a poor mad fellow who was lately trawled up by some Lodi fishermen. One would think that being lost in the sea for, apparently, several days would be enough to turn anyone’s brain, but Master Linatas says he finds something more than medically strange about this one.”
Ogial picked up a note and twiddled it in his fingers in Penric’s direction. Penric took it gingerly. The crisp writing didn’t add much to the archdivine’s precis, beyond the nameless patient’s guessed age, early twenties, and coloration—caramel skin, curly dark hair, brown eyes—which described half the folk in Adria. The reported drooling, thrashing, and broken speech could denote, well, any number of conditions.
“You are well-fitted to sort out the medical from any uncanny diagnosis, I expect”—the archdivine raised a hand to stem Pen’s opening protest—“in a purely advisory capacity, I promise. If the physician’s more lurid concerns are misplaced, as such usually are, you can reassure him and be on your way at once.”
True, mused Des, unruffled.
You just want the excuse to get out.
Likewise true. So?
Ogial turned to the dedicat. “Tebi, escort Learned Penric here back to your master, with my blessing upon your work. He’s new to Lodi, so don’t lose him in the back alleys or let him fall into a canal.” He added to Penric with a chuckle, “Although if those whites of yours don’t end up dunked at least once during the festival, you aren’t doing the Bastard’s Day right.”
Pen managed an appropriate smile at the wit of his senior. And rescuer, he was reminded; the archdivine’s prompt offer of employment in his curia had hooked Pen out of Martensbridge the moment the passes had cleared of snow in the spring. His half-bow grew more sincerely grateful. “Very well, Your Grace.”
Tebi, dutifully preceding Penric out the door, cast a glance over his shoulder with scarcely lessened alarm. It couldn’t be for Pen’s vestments, an Adriac design common enough in so large a city—a close linen-white coat, fabric thin for the season, buttoned up the front to a high round collar and skirts open to the calves, handy to don over ordinary clothes. So, presumably, the unease was for the triple loop of braid pinned over Pen’s left shoulder, the silver strand with the white and cream marking him as not just a regular divine, but a regulated sorcerer. If he did go out on the town tonight, Pen thought he might leave both items in his clothes chest, and not just for the hazard of the canals.
Pen attempted a friendly return nod, which didn’t seem to reassure Tebi much. Pen wasn’t averse to his garb buying him easy respect from adults, but he’d never expected it to frighten children. Or at least children schooled in the meanings of Temple trimmings.
We don’t need the guide, Des opined as they exited a side door of the curia onto a non-liquid street. I remember my way around Lodi well enough.
From near a hundred years ago? Des’s previous riders, the courtesan Mira and, come to think, her servant Umelan, had both been long-time residents of the town—then.
Islands don’t move that much. Granted bridges rise and fall, and new buildings sprout—they detoured around just such a collection of scaffolding, stone, and shouting workmen—but I could have landed us at the sailors’ hospice all the same. I wonder if they still dub the place Sea Sick? Also, Learned Ruchia visited here more than once, on her assorted missions. Des’s immediate prior possessor, from whom Pen had so unexpectedly inherited the demon and her powers. And knowledge and skills. And opinions. And, yes, memories not his own. Pen wondered if that would ever stop feeling strange.
